


Brushes with Beings

by AeroplanesR0ck



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, M/M, Magical Realism, Siren Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 14:35:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12913953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AeroplanesR0ck/pseuds/AeroplanesR0ck
Summary: Five times John Watson encountered a magical being, and one time he fell in love with one.





	Brushes with Beings

**Author's Note:**

> I've been sitting this on ages, but I wanted to finish the Hold and Release series before starting a new project. Super excited to finally write this up!

(1)

When John Watson first started school, aged five, he was told to eat up all the food on his plate. This perplexed him, as his mummy had always told him to leave a little food on his plate when he was done. That night, when Mummy was tucking him into bed, he asked her about it. 

“Mummy, why did my teacher tell me to eat up all my food when we’re not s’posed to?”

Mummy smoothed a hand over John’s hair with a sweet smile. “Well, other people eat up all their food because they don’t want to waste it. But our leftover food doesn’t go to waste, because we have a brownie.”

John cocked his head curiously. “What’s a brownie?”

“brownies are magical little creatures. You never see them, but they come out at night, when everyone is sleeping, and they help is by cleaning up the house and putting everything to rights. So we leave a little extra food, so they can have something to eat for their supper.”

John’s brow creased in confusion. “Why don’t we just make an extra dinner for them? That’ll be nicer than eating leftovers.”

Mummy shook her head with a smile. “Oh, our brownie wouldn’t like that. It would be like paying them, you see, and you mustn't ever pay a brownie. They aren’t servants, and if you ever treat them like one, they’ll soon leave.”

“All right.” John said with a yawn, finally out of questions. “G’night, Mummy.”

“Good night, my love.” She kissed him on the forehead and turned out the light, softly closing the door behind her.

 

(2)

John and his family lived in London, but in the summer, they would go to the countryside to live with his grandmother in Suffolk.

Nana’s house was a wonderful place. It was just close enough to town that they could cycle down in the mornings if they wanted to, and poke about the little shops and buy a pastry to snack on as they wandered about. Behind Nana’s house was a forest, and John and Harry liked to wander through it, and play there. Well, John liked to play. He was ten, and full of energy and a sense of adventure. Harry was fourteen, and she’d sometimes play with him, but other times she’d decide that she would rather climb a tree and just sit there for several hours with her notebook.

John was supposed to stay with Harry, but of course, while climbing trees is fun, sitting in them and doing nothing is rather less fun. While Harry was preoccupied with her notebook, John snuck off to have an adventure on his own.

He had a grand time, but Nana always said that they had to start heading back even before the sun started to set, so they would be back well before dark. The sun wasn’t as high in the sky as it had been, so John figured it was about time to start going back. Only, he didn’t have any idea where back was.

John was a practical boy, and so he figured that walking was more likely to get him home than sitting around. So he picked a directing, and walked. The sun got lower, and lower. John didn’t seem any closer to reaching the end of the forest. Grown-up ten-year old boy he may have been, but John was tired, and hungry, and terribly lost. He sat down and began to cry. 

He heard footsteps approach, and stop right in front of him. He looked up, and up, and up. Standing in front of him was a centaur. John recognised them, from the pictures in his books. Tears forgotten, he stared in awe.

“It is late, for you to be so deep in our forest, little human.” Said the centaur in a kind voice.

“I didn’t mean to be. I got lost.” John explained.

“The human settlement is not too far. I shall walk with you.”

John nodded gratefully, scrambling to his feet. The centaur walked with him through the forest, until he could see the lights from Nana’s house up ahead.

“There it is! Thank you!” John grinned up at his companion.

The centaur nodded at him, and then silently melted back into the shadows.

 

(3)

John took the cheapest dorm, in uni. It was a ten minute bike ride to campus, and it was a huge old house, with enough space for thirty people. There was a kitchen, a common room, a laundry room, and absolutely nothing worked.

“The place is infested with gremlins.” One dorm mate had explained to him on his first day there. “Don’t bother calling the electrician. Just invest in some candles, don’t buy anything that needs refrigerating, and go hang out somewhere else if you’re expecting a call.”

It wasn’t to say that nothing worked ever. It was just that you couldn’t rely on any sort of technology in the house to be at all reliable. John learned quickly to adapt, just as his dorm mate said he would. He started taking his tea black, and kept a stash of candles ready for the weekly blackout. He made sure to start attempting to do his laundry well before he ran out, just in case the washing machine broke down. By the time he graduated, he barely noticed the gremlins as anything out of the ordinary.

(4)

John and his team were out on a routine patrol when they spotted the footprint. They didn’t recognise it for what it was, at first, it was so huge. It just looked like an oddly shaped dent in the ground. It was Murray who realised it first. 

“Shit, guys, that’s a footprint!” 

They all leaned over the side of the truck, trying to get a better look. 

“Fuck, imagine the size of the giant that made that. It’s about as long as I am tall!”

“Looks fresh, guys.”

“Shit, you’re right. Turn this truck around.”

That was the closest John came to a giant, though they were supposedly quite common in the mountainous regions of Afghanistan. Most would probably be relieved about that, but John was honestly a little disappointed. 

(5)

It seemed, John thought as he sat in his bedsit, that his track record of living in housing that came with invisible magical beings attached would remain unbroken. At least the ghost seemed reasonably friendly.

It even was somewhat helpful. Many nights, he was jerked out of nightmares feeling like he’d been doused in cold water. Not the most pleasant way to wake, admittedly, but John supposed it was better than staying asleep. The ghost would never let him have lie-ins, though. No matter how badly he’d slept the night before, if he tried to sleep past eight in the morning, he’d find himself woken by that same cold-water sensation. 

(+1)

John didn’t even realise, at first, that his flatmate wasn’t human. Well, actually, he’d suspected something at first.

“Have you got elf blood? Fae?” He asked over dinner at Angelo’s. 

Sherlock had only said ‘No’, and looked so offended that John dropped the line of questioning entirely.

There was no reason he couldn’t be humans, of course. Humans could ethereally beautiful, and astoundingly brilliant, and gracefully dextrous. To find a single person who was all three at once might be rare, certainly, but it wasn’t impossible. 

John might have continued on, living with Sherlock and imagining that he was nothing more than an extraordinary but ultimately human human being, and Sherlock would have been happy to let him, except that occasionally, the powers he’d inherited came in quite useful on cases.

They were chasing a suspect through London, but Sherlock could already tell they weren’t going to catch up to him. The suspect knew the area too well, and was quicker on his feet than the both of them. Lestrade was on his way, but the suspect would be lost before he arrived. Sherlock made a split-second decision.

What John saw was Sherlock stopping short and shedding his coat, before emitting an inhuman shriek. As John stared in astonishment, a pair of wings burst through the back of Sherlock’s shirt filling the alleyway. The shriek was not a shriek, but a beautifully seductive song. It filled John’s head until no thought remained, only a blank, relentless desire. He’d follow that song anywhere, even through fire, or off the end of a cliff. John trailed after Sherlock in a daze as Sherlock stalked down the alleyway towards the suspect, who first froze in shock, then began stumbling towards Sherlock, irresistibly drawn in by his song. He didn’t resist as Sherlock took his wrists, snapping the handcuffs around him. 

Thee moment the suspect was cuffed, the song ended. A wave of disappointment crashed over John, but he shook it off, taking charge of the suspect as Sherlock dusted off his coat and looked mournfully at the remains of his shirt. 

“So. Are you an angel?” John asked, when they were safely back in Baker Street. 

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “No, John. Do I seem like an angel to you? I’m a siren.”

John frowned. “Shouldn’t you be, y’know, in the ocean?”

Sherlock glared at John. “No.” He said flatly.

“Well.” John said, quickly changing the subject. “That was pretty amazing, what you did. Why don’t you do that more often? Would save us a lot of running about.”

“Well, firstly, I like the running. Secondly, I like my shirts. And thirdly, I like to keep it quiet, because it seems to make people even more frightening than they already do.”

“I don’t find you frightening.” John pointed out. 

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “Then perhaps you should.” He rose from his chair, slinking gracefully towards John. “What you heard earlier was my truesong, my most powerful song. I need to be in my true form to produce it. But any song I produce has some power.”

He began to sing, something they’d heard on the radio in the cab back. It was some pop song, an upbeat, thinly veiled metaphor for sex. John’s mouth was suddenly dry as a desert, his cock hard as steel. His skin suddenly felt raw and sensitive, aching for any touch. Just the scratch of his wool jumper against his skin almost made him moan aloud. 

Sherlock stopped singing abruptly and stepped back. “So there you go. I can make you, a straight man, want me. I could make Sally Donovan imagine she’s fallen in love with me, if I wished. If you don’t find that frightening...perhaps you should.”

He swept into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

John took a moment to collect himself before getting up and knocking on Sherlock’s door. Sherlock grunted in response, and so John let himself in. 

“I’m not frightened of you,” John said, “because I know you. I trust you. Whatever it is you can do, you don’t. That’s what matters.”

Sherlock snorted. “You didn’t even know that I’m a siren until tonight.”

John shrugged. “Well, perhaps I’m not so familiar with _what_ you are. But I know _who_ you are.”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “And who is that?”

“A good man. Someone who can do something extraordinary, and uses it to help someone. My best friend. A man I’ve fallen in love with.”

Well, he hadn’t meant to say that. Seemed it was to be a night of revelations.

Sherlock was frowning at him. “You’re still feeling the effects. That’s unusual. You must have some sort of susceptibility. You should go to bed. If you’re still feeling strangely in the morning, I know someone who can-”

“This isn’t because of your singing.” John interrupted impatiently. He hadn’t meant to reveal his feelings, but now that he had, he wasn’t about to let them get swept aside as a residual magical effect. “I’ve loved you for months.”

Sherlock studied John for a long moment, looking surprised. “Oh.” He breathed. 

John shook his head. “Don’t- It isn’t a big deal. You don’t need to say anything, just-”

“I love you too.” 

John stopped short, and then after a stunned moment, broke out into a wide grin. “That’s the best thing I’ve heard all day.”


End file.
